The Supreme Court is weighing whether Florida homeowners must be compensated because a beach-widening project cost them their exclusive access to the Gulf of Mexico.

The justices heard argument Wednesday in a case with potentially widespread implications for coastal communities nationwide that confront beach erosion.

The court is being asked to rule for the first time that a court decision can amount to a taking of property. The Constitution requires governments to pay "just compensation" when they take private property for public use.

Six homeowners in Florida's panhandle are challenging a Florida Supreme Court decision that changed their "beachfront property to beach view property," their lawyer, D. Kent Safriet, told the court.

The Missouri Supreme Court overturned a man's death sentence Tuesday because his attorney failed to question the character of a murder victim who had child pornography on his computer.

The high court acknowledged in its unanimous ruling that character evidence about murder victims typically is barred. But when relatives of victim Ralph Lape Jr. testified about his generous character during the sentencing phase of Mark Gill's murder trial, defense attorneys should have countered by highlighting the smut on Lape's computer, the Supreme Court said.

Had Gill's attorneys done so, the Supreme Court said, jurors may have been less inclined to sentence him to death for the July 2002 kidnapping, robbery and shooting. The Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court for a new sentencing hearing.

Cape Girardeau County Prosecutor Morley Swingle said he would again seek the death penalty for Gill.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a California death row inmate who was convicted in the gruesome murders of four people in 1983.

The justices said Monday they would not review an appeals court ruling that upheld the murder conviction and death sentence of Kevin Cooper.

Cooper came within a few hours of execution in 2004 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in to order genetic testing on a hair and a bloody shirt found at the murder scene that Cooper said would prove he was not the killer.

The San Francisco-based appeals court later backed a district judge's ruling that the test results did not show Cooper's innocence.

Cooper, who has long maintained his innocence, had escaped from a California state prison. He was convicted of the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her friend. They were stabbed and hacked repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. Joshua Ryen, then 8, survived a slit throat.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected another request by former Qwest Communications International Inc. CEO Joseph Nacchio to review his insider trading conviction.

The court revealed Monday that it won't reconsider its decision in October not to take up his case.

Nacchio was convicted in 2007 on 19 counts of insider trading, and he reported to prison in April.

However a federal judge is reconsidering his sentence. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that he should be resentenced because the trial judge miscalculated when he sentenced Nacchio to six years in prison and ordered him to pay $71 million in fines and forfeitures.

Nacchio still faces a civil lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Roman Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., is expected to release thousands of documents connected to sexual abuse lawsuits.

The diocese was ordered by a Waterbury Superior Court judge to release the papers Tuesday.

The files include more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against six priests settled by the diocese in 2001. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the diocese's appeal of a Connecticut Supreme Court decision ordering release of the documents.

Depositions, affidavits and motions are included in the records, which have been under seal. They could shed light on how newly retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan handled the abuse allegations when he was Bridgeport bishop.